But that’s not to say he hasn’t ruminated on it in his mind’s eye.
Without much prompting, he can still reel off some of the game’s pivotal moments, where Galway let an All-Ireland final slip through their fingers.
When the game was on the line, Armagh seized the momentum that came their way. Galway didn’t, their profligacy costing them the sport’s ultimate prize.
All-Ireland finals tend to be binary affairs.
“Once the goal went in, it kind of changed the momentum a bit and then obviously we were missing chances,” Conroy sighs.
“I think our efficiency [from shots] was down to 51pc, 52pc [in the final]. We hadn’t been there all year in percentages and it’s just a pity that it was the All-Ireland final day that it happened.
“We need to live with that. We’re all involved, I got blocked late on and we missed some other chances, we hit the post.
“We lost a turnover as well when we were in with a scoring opportunity. I think we had another one with a breakaway, half a goal chance, and I don’t think we got a point out of it.
“Armagh will say the same, that they missed . . . Conor Turbitt I think missed a free early on so it probably swings both ways.
“But I think whenever you’re on 51pc, 52pc efficiency it’s not going to win the big games.”
He’s quick to give Armagh their dues and particularly to Joe McElroy for his brilliant block at Conroy’s feet with the game in the balance. But he doesn’t hide the fact that it stings all the more as it was their second final defeat in three seasons.
“I think the compound effect really [of losing two finals], I have found it harder anyway. It might just be coming back to Galway doing two homecomings in two years having lost. It is not easy.
“It has an effect and it will take a while to get over it. And I’m sure in 20 years’ time, please God if we are all still alive, that we will look back and it will still sting.
“But what do you do? You have to get on with it, knuckle down and back with the club which is probably a good distraction.”
Conroy is speaking in his capacity as the PwC GAA/GPA Footballer of the Month winner for July.
The St James’ clubman turned 35 earlier this summer and has just put down his 17th season in maroon. He made his championship debut in an All-Ireland quarter-final clash with Kerry in 2008 having captained the county to an All-Ireland minor title a year earlier.
Conroy has been a near constant in that time, with a sickening double leg break sustained against Kerry in the 2018 Super 8s clash his only long spell away from the team.
By the time he fully returned from that injury, he’d been out for well over a year and had passed the 30 mark.
But he’s recovered to put down some of his best years in the Galway engine room.
He puts his longevity and fitness down to a few things. He muses that perhaps genetics play their part and maybe it’s that he was outside playing football and hurling and whatever else for as long as he can remember.
Perhaps it is just blind luck, given how he has seen others who have come and gone from the Galway set-up struggle with regular niggles.
At 35, he’s in line for an All-Star and he’s also in the Footballer of the Year conversation.
That is not typically the form that players depart the county stage in. But any decision on a return for next year is for another day.
“I think it would be the wrong time to make the decision when the game is still so fresh in your memory and the emotions might still be a little bit raw.
“I think over the next couple of weeks I need to sit down and do a bit of thinking about it. I think it’s just the energy and drive just to see if it’s there.
“In fairness, my body has been good to me. It has held up well through the years. I’ve been blessed with injuries and just need to make sure that if I do decide to go back, I’m able to give it everything because if you only half want to be there, if you don’t feel like you’re totally driven to go again, there’s no point being in the set-up.”
